Beginnings

I’m currently looking out my back window at the biggest pile of horse poop I’ve ever seen.  A local farmer was more than happy to haul his excess horse excrement from his farm in a dump truck for the sake of our compost pile, and thus it sits.  Pete hasn’t had to leave town for work once since we moved in to our new house but is, of course, not here to do anything about it for the next 2 days because of a training, so I’m just stuck staring at it, imagining what the heck our neighbors are thinking.  I’m sure they already think we’re a little on the crazy side because Pete’s been spotted using a reel mower, planting broccoli in the dark of night, flipping tractor tires, and doing hundreds of squats/lunges/pick-your-poisons, all for the fun of it.  So in actuality, our neighbors think that Pete’s crazy based on logical observation and that I’m just crazy for tying myself to that strange man.  But they sure are nice to our faces, so we can’t complain about that. 

The anticipation of the poop delivery had been looming for several weeks prior to today’s dump truck deposit, while my excitement to compost began months prior.  My plan: we’d start with a trashcan, add my coffee grounds and some scraps, toss in the mowed grass, and build our compost from there.  Pete’s plan came out of the woodwork the day he found out that farmers give their animal crap away for FREE.  “Sal, they just GIVE it to you, no questions asked!”  The Ackers are a frugal people, and no good deal ever goes unnoticed.  A small trashcan would not do, I would soon learn; it would take a solid portion of our backyard to handle the amount of poop we just came into (for free, mind you).   

I was about to go outside to take a picture of the brown mass of a pile for you, but I just heard the next-door neighbor start up his lawn mower.  I’m not sure if I’m ready for the “what the hell ya’ll got that huge pile a’ horshit for?” conversation just yet.  I’ll let Pete handle that one when he gets back in town so the neighbors will continue thinking he’s crazy, and I was just blinded by love.

Okay, I made it in and out without being spotted.  It's hard to tell just how big the pile is because of the scale of our yard and our neighbor's yard combined.  Just trust me on this: the dump truck was fully loaded.